D&D General Oh Please give me some Happy Backgrounds!!

[KYRON45]

That's only an excuse the first few times it happens, a legitimate accident. Then you are told you are doing something very bad, you see you are not in your native culture, and even if it happens without your awareness you take reasonable steps to mitigate the issue.

Even someone with no filter quickly realizes they cannot talk about certain subjects without severe consequences, and modifies their behavior accordingly. Accidents still happen, but you don't say "that's just how I am", you make a good faith effort to adjust your behavior or establish checks to try and catch yourself before doing the thing everyone reacts so badly to.

It's just a fun narrative quirk.
If it doesn't work with your group.....don't use it.

 

[TiQuinn]

I can’t tell if people dislike kender, the comic relief gag designed for a series of books or kender players who don’t realize when a gag is supposed to stop. I feel the two get conflated sometimes.

 

[Seramus]

It's just a fun narrative quirk.
If it doesn't work with your group.....don't use it.

We don't use it. Or rather, it's something understood to be normal in their own culture, and you will encounter it in kender areas, but kender players are expected to have broken the habit.

To be fair, I've allowed middle grounds like Twig Twiddleknot, who checked his pockets before he left any shop to see if he accidentally took something, and sheepishly gives it back. That was a fun bit of roleplay.

Buy I've had to give "The Talk" to many kender players who ranged from innocently disruptive to genuine trolls.

For me, it was more than a fun narrative quirk during the popularity of Dragonlance. It was an exhaustive point of repeat disruption that had long since stopped being cute by sheer volume of incidents.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I reflected on the thread topic overnight, and thought I'd write more about it.

First, I think that this topic (character backgrounds) is only really applicable to D&D and D&D-like games, which, you know, is also why it is in the D&D forum. So with that in mind, I'd relate a little about my personal experience, which may be interesting but does not apply to everyone here.

In my experience, character backgrounds in early D&D (OD&D, B/X, 1e) were pretty de minimis. In fact, when I play OSR/1e today, character backgrounds are still very minimal- if they exist at all. A character I rolled a while back, for example, had two distinguishing characteristics- a really high strength, and a notably sub-average intelligence (as well as a not-so-great wisdom). His background? He found a two-handed sword while drunkenly wandering in an alley, and ... that's it!

The question is ... why? Why such minimal backgrounds? I think that there are a number of reasons for it. I'd argue that the norms of gameplay and the system itself provided implicit direction for such minimal backgrounds. Obviously, there were no backgrounds- that helped.

But just as importantly, alignment had mechanical effects (which was a "RP" stricture). Characters started with almost no abilities that had to be "explained" with a background. Class abilities were not bespoke and there was no ability to customize with feats. There wasn't the idea of "builds" for a "character concept." And characters became customized and differentiated through items and experiences- the backgrounds literally didn't matter, because they started from zero and became revealed through the adventure. Why bother with a customized background and an idea about the character as a great ... I dunno, master of the whip when you might find a magic trident? You didn't invest any authorial intent in crafting a detailed backstory, since all that mattered what was revealed during play.

On the other hand, when I play 5e I do enjoy writing up a background. Because 5e is different. I have to make sense of the character that I am building. A character that has a specific origin, feats, class, and, yes, background. Some ... concept ... that brings these disparate elements together into a thematic whole. And I don't roll randomly for abilities- I choose them. My mind needs to make sense of it all, and I do it through a story ... a narrative background, that ties it together. So I craft a backstory (that I am sure no one else reads) for any 5e character that I make that allows me to make sense of the character.

So ... with that in mind, do I make happy characters? Eh, not really. But I'd argue that there's two reasons for that- personal, and structural. The first doesn't apply outside of, um, me, so I'll just briefly explain it. The second is ... well, my musings on the topic, and may or may not be true. Give it a test drive everyone (and @Hussar ) and tell me what you think.

A. Personal- I find the tension in characters that are forced to follow a "code" (a personal code, an oath, a pact, a set of strictures, etc.) that is often "black or white" with the complexity of moral choices in a gray world often provokes interesting roleplaying choices and leads to unexpected character growth, and for that reason I often play characters that are "lawful" or are otherwise bound in some way in order to see how it plays out. The nature of how they came to that code (or bond) is usually not because they are well-adjusted, happy, and otherwise lovin' life. Not always! But more often than not.


B. Structural. Others have touched on this, but I think that non-happy backgrounds will generally be more common. Part of this is that there are certain options in 5e that lend themselves to non-happy backgrounds. Warlocks (pacts). Oath of Vengenace. Hermit background. Heck, if you still use the traits/flaws table, you can look at that list and see how a lot of the choices ... speak to a certain darkness. Which makes sense! Why?

Because they are backgrounds. In other words, most of us, when looking at our characters, are imagining some kind of discontinuity- in other words, "The character was doing X, and then Y happened, and that was the call to adventure!" The Y in that case is the discontinuity, and is usually the source of conflict or upheaval. A lot of people go with some kind of cliche (the monastery burned down, the family was killed, the nation was invaded, etc.), but as a usual rule, you are looking for some kind of event that caused the character to go, "I am no longer living my old life, but I am going forth to save the world / kill things and take their stuff!"

That doesn't preclude the happy life. But it does make it somewhat harder to justify a narrative. "I had a great life. Nothing wrong. Everything great. So ... I decided to change everything, leave my happy and comfortable life behind, and set forth with these four people I just met! No, not crazy at all." Not impossible by any means, and I've seen people (including one I'm thinking of that is on PbP) do it well on a regular basis. But it's not ... it's not the first thing that will spring to mind.

Just my two cents. Well, you know me- it's more like a quarter.

 

[Hussar]

And, really, like all things, there's a spectrum. Life has tragedies. That's just life. So, sure, I can totally get behind that for inspiring a character. But, like all things, it does become something of a cliche when every single PC is an orphan, abused by life, scarred and whatnot, and the character hasn't actually left his or her hometown yet.

The idea upthread of "knives" is an interesting one. And, it speaks to my point - too many knives and it's almost parody.

 

[Piperken]

...I do wonder about Pilgrimages and the such and whether the pilgrims expected bandits or wild beasts to be a threat. but still travelled due to their religious fervour. IIRC Chaucers doesnt mention Highwaymen in the Canterbury tales and by that time their were no large predators left in England, but I do know that during the Hundred Years war pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela would avoid travel through France and take safer routes instead.
There is also the examples of the Grand Tour, where young nobles would make educational tours of european sites, generally done in safer times but there was always a risk of bandits...

Pilgrimages (and by these, I mean ones undertaken with genuine intent by the lower classes) done as an act of faith was absolutely a thing; enduring difficulties was seen as the physical complement to the spiritual one. How well prepared pilgrims were probably varied (much like us today); going as a group with like-minded ppls eased some of the potential hazards.

Most everyone tended to be welcoming towards pilgrims; you knew what times of years to expect them, they might bring business and news from other areas.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I can’t tell if people dislike kender, the comic relief gag designed for a series of books or kender players who don’t realize when a gag is supposed to stop. I feel the two get conflated sometimes.

i feel like it's more likely the latter, it's one of those things that when used in a book the writer has absolute control to implement it as and when needed for to do things for the story and there's no-one to get irritated at the consequences because they're all fictional, but in a game you have to consider how your actions will impact the group given typically you'll all have to deal with the consequences if the kender player takes something they ought to of left alone or the tension produced if they keep stickyfingering through the rest of the party's pockets when they've been told not to a dozen times over already.

 

[plecostomus]

FWIW one of my players wanted to play a hobbit so I told him, "We're in the Dragonlance setting, so those are called kender" and that was the extent of our exploration of kender culture.

And the kender's backstory is he has 5 kids and a 6th on the way so he's adventuring to make some money for them. None of my players came in with edgy backstories. The kender player specifically told me he wanted a simpler character compared to the one he plays in another game. We are both players in that game, and sadly I'm not sure which one of our characters is edgier.

Also if anyone has ever watched the anime Carole & Tuesday, I always remember the part where Carole describes her childhood as a refugee and Tuesday is like "omg, what a scary life" (not exact quote) and Carole just says, "I always thought I had a normal life." That always felt super realistic to me.

(I opened this thread about backstories and found it's a kender thread, but I can talk about both!)

 

[overgeeked]

Happy, content people don’t choose to leave hearth, home, and loved ones to venture forth and murder their way across the world for fortune and glory. There are a lot of bad cliches in backgrounds, sure. But you’d have a far more cozy game than most want if the PCs were happy and content at home.

 

[Mannahnin]

Happy, content people don’t choose to leave hearth, home, and loved ones to venture forth and murder their way across the world for fortune and glory. There are a lot of bad cliches in backgrounds, sure. But you’d have a far more cozy game than most want if the PCs were happy and content at home.

The amount of actual murder (as opposed to subdual) can vary from campaign to campaign and character to character. Especially in 5E where you can almost always choose to knock people out.

And being discontented doesn't always stem from tragedy at home. As we've seen a bunch of examples of given in the thread. Wanderlust, ambition, religious dedication, a desire to bring justice to the world, to complete a noble quest, to become a hero, to learn arcane knowledge and the secrets of the universe, to serve nature against monstrous invaders or corruptors or exploiters, to become wealthy and able to live a live of luxury and comfort (and/or provide one to your friends and family), or simple boredom can make an adventurer.

It's certainly true that most games have a share of violence that would dissuade most real people, but a lot of D&D campaigns have a more four-color comic take on violence. Characters get scratched and beat up and bloodied but rarely disemboweled or maimed. It's not all survival horror like our beloved OSR can often be.